The Economics of Suffering

Christianity, along with all the other ancient religions, see the world as a zero-sum game because none of them understand economics. Thus, the rich man MUST impoverish himself to help the poor man.

Buddhism and Christianity are designed to help people absorb the "necessary suffering" and engage in the exchange anyway. In order to encourage the rich man to embrace this result, suffering has to be a positive good, suffering has to be BETTER than the money he is giving up. That's a hard sell, but that's the pitch made by the cross. In a subsistence-level society, where economics is only crudely understood, the cross makes a lot of sense.

But once a better understanding of economics has turned the culture into a surplus-goods society, once a large number of people understand that there is no necessary suffering in an economic exchange, once a large number of people understand that economic exchange actually makes BOTH parties better off, the entire ancient rationale for how to deal with suffering collapses.

“And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small café in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.” ~ Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“It is so hard for people to get out of the notion that life is a zero-sum game. They think if one man benefits, another must lose. But in a free market, both people can benefit.” ~ Milton Friedman

It's hard, because that notion of gain vs. loss is the basis for every ancient religion. That notion turns out not to be correct in economic terms for economic exchanges between relatively mature adult parties.
However, it is still correct (for the moment) in biological terms. So, a sexual exchange between a man and a woman can result in the woman getting pregnant. While we live in an economics-surplus society, we do NOT live in a biological-surplus society. Suffering in pregnancy and child-rearing is entirely necessary, entirely unavoidable, this biological exchange is both (a) still zero-sum and (b) necessary for the existence of mankind. It is literally subsistence-level living.

Whereas ancient societies were ENTIRELY subsistence level, modern society has split into two: the general economics and the reproductive economics. A confusion between the two results in absurdities.

In Christian conception of the market economy, the rich should give their wealth to the poor, participate in the suffering of the poor, "give until it hurts." But, in the market economy, that is completely wrong. In a well-designed, well-executed market transaction, nobody suffers at all. Everyone wins. That's the definition of a "free market" - no suffering in the exchange of goods. A free market is not about whether the government is involved (the government is really just another corporation) or whether there is a monopoly involved (one sign of a truly free market is the creation of monopolies), rather, a free market is one in which every exchange is a mutual win, everyone is better off afterwards. Christianity doesn't have a language for this. It is a completely foreign concept.

Hook-up culture, contraception and abortion are all attempts to make biological economics mirror general market economics. Remember, in general economics every well-designed interaction between adults is a win-win, nobody has to suffer. But, given the reality of pregnancy and the reality of resource allocation for child-rearing, that result cannot be obtained in biology in any classically economic sense.  Pregnancy is unavoidable suffering. Child-rearing is unavoidable spending of resources to someone who simply will never repay you in like kind. In child-rearing, the fact that some of the parties are NOT adults means the adult parties in the transaction MUST experience some suffering for everyone in the transaction to win.

When Jesus said "the poor will always be with you", he could not have been talking about the adults. In a modern, surplus-good society, the only ones that still fit the description of "poor" are the infants. 

But, precisely because we now understand market economies, society is no longer oriented to accept suffering as a necessary price in every exchange. Precisely because we are now surplus-goods, and suffering is not always necessary (indeed, suffering is a sign of a badly-created market transaction), we no longer maintain a widespread acceptance for how to value suffering. That's why people aren't having children. The surplus-goods societies we created necessarily turned "suffering" from a univocal word with a univocal value into an equivocal word with an uncertain value. The value changes on the context. Given advances in biology, the context is also shifting.

Nobody knows how to properly value suffering. Christianity's definition doesn't seem accurate anymore because it isn't. It doesn't correctly reflect the market. Suffering isn't a necessary component of every exchange. But Hayek's and Milton Friedman's definition is also incorrect, because it only applies to market goods and a market economy, it doesn't apply to the biological exchanges that produce human life and allow human civilization to continue.

Quantum physics and relativity broke the classical physics model into two incommensurable pieces.  General economics and biological economics broke the classical Christian model into two incommensurable pieces. Just as physics now lacks a universal field equation, people now lack a universal theory of suffering. I don't know how to remedy this, but at least figuring out the problem is a beginning step. 

Should Children Be Executed?

One of the classic Catholic justifications for the death penalty is the state's duty to protect its own citizens from harm (CCC 2265, Aquinas,  ST IIa-IIae, q. 64, a. 3). Traditionally, the state is permitted to execute a citizen for the same reason a state is permitted to execute an invader - in both cases, the state is bound to protect its own citizens from danger.

But, traditionally, a person who cannot distinguish right from wrong was spared execution. 

This is objectively absurd. Someone who knows right from wrong but doesn't care is, from the POV of outcomes, no different from someone who cannot distinguish right from wrong. In both cases, the person will do evil. Sure, the first is morally culpable and the second is not, but in both cases, citizens will come to harm precisely because evil will not be distinguished from the good, nor will evil be avoided.

Thus, if the state truly has a duty to protect its own citizens from harm, the state has a duty to execute both the one who chooses evil instead of good AND the one who cannot distinguish evil from good. The child and the child-like must be executed not because they are guilty, but because they are mortally dangerous. 

And, indeed, since the death penalty is about protection, not about revenge, it would seem morally better to execute the child-like if only because it so clearly isn't about revenge for their evil-doing (for we know they are not guilty in any classical sense) but definitely about preventing future evil so as to protect the population from further harm. 

That is, we do not execute children, true, but we do not execute them ONLY because we are assuredly more powerful than children. We can, unquestionably, restrain children from doing ignorant evil. However, if the person in question is very powerful but child-like in his moral reasoning, that is, if he cannot certainly be restrained by more powerful and more morally good men, then the morally good men have a duty to remove the powerful, child-like ignorantly evil man from their midst. 

Thus, the legal defense non compos mentis has no bearing on whether or not the person should be executed. If we are truly executing a person to avoid having evil wreaked upon innocent citizens, then it isn't a question of mind and choice, but rather of power to do evil, and likelihood that evil will be done. 

What Vegetarians Don't Understand

The problem with vegetarians: they have no freaking idea how biology works. For instance, to take but one of innumerable examples, iron absorption.

Human beings need iron for, among other things, oxygen transport in the blood, via the heme molecule. 

If you gnaw on an iron bar, or take iron supplements, that probably isn't going to help much. Eating plants with iron is essentially no different than gnawing on an iron bar. Iron transport and absorption are much easier when the iron is bound inside a heme molecule. Heme iron is absorbed efficiently by the body (about 15% to 35%) compared to non-heme iron (2% to 20%).

But how do we get heme iron, that is, iron bound within a heme molecule, into our bodies? Simple. Eat animal meat.

Plants don't wrap iron in heme.

Animals do.

You already know - and accept - that our gut biota, the organisms in our gut, either produce vitamins we can't (e.g., B vitamins) or help us absorb vitamins we otherwise couldn't. That's what gut bacteria do. That's why we have them. They are symbiotes that we cannot survive without because they digest food for us. 

Animals are simply macro-versions of our gut biota. They are really, really big bacteria with fur, legs and motility that walk around pre-digesting things for us. In the case of iron, animals pre-digest iron, wrap it in a heme molecule for us, and allow us to absorb iron much more easily. Since animals act as pre-processors for our food, a lot of the vitamins and minerals that are not normally available to us through the raw mineral or plant venues become available because the animals have pre-chewed, pre-digested, and pre-packaged the necessary vitamins and minerals for us. 

That's why we eat animals. Animals are food processing factories.

In fact, animal meat is really the original skin-foil bag of ultra-processed nutrients. Animals not only serve as food processing factories for us, they even wrap the resulting food in a sterile skin/fur package, often making the food permanently safe for consumption as long as the waste processing lines (the guts) are first removed (yes, I know, there are parasites which inhabit muscle tissue, but in general, the skin serves as a crude form of sterile plastic wrap). 

Every domesticated animal is an independent, mobile food processing plant, an external gut, a walking massive biota for our small intestines. Eating vegetarian is equivalent to surgically removing several feet of your small intestines or nuking the biota in your gut. Can you survive? Yes. Maybe. But it won't be nearly as easy. You've just voluntarily crippled yourself.

For us, meat animals are external symbiotes. We deliberately cultivate them, by feeding them appropriate pro-biotics, so we can consume what they produce - partially pre-digested, pre-metabolized vitamins, minerals and enzymes we need to live.

Hindus are famously vegetarian, revering cows as signs of divinity. India's bus lines used to carry ads on the sides of each bus that said "Killing germs is not murder! Use Lysol!" That is the logical end of Hindu philosophy, which lies at the root of vegetarianism. Jainism, the idea that we should wear masks so as not to accidentally inhale and kill insects, and sweep the ground before us as we walk, so as not to accidentally step on and crush a worm, is part of the Eastern nonsense that values all life equally.

Christianity recognizes this as absurd. Just as killing germs is not murder, so killing cows is not murder. Use not only Lysol, but your barbecue and stove. Eat beef, chicken, pork and lamb, dog and cat, fish and clam, or any other meat-bearing animal. Let Nature pre-chew your food. That's what Nature is for. 

Education is a Scam

Education is NOT about teaching.

Most colleges employ most professors as adjuncts (i.e., part-time). Up to 40% of profs are adjunct, part-time positions. Up to 70% are non-tenure track or adjunct.

No business in the world makes their core employees part-time. Since profs ARE part-time, teaching cannot possibly be the core business of a college.

Administration has to be the core business, because administrators are NEVER part-time. What do administrators do?

They make sure the college stays in legal compliance to be the recipient of government grants, loans, and other funding. Thus, the core business of a college is to harvest tax dollars and distribute those tax dollars to employees.

There is no other conclusion that can be drawn.

As innumerable financial analysts have pointed out, McDonalds is actually a real-estate business. They just have the renters sell hamburgers to pay the rent on the real estate. Similarly, the entire education industry is actually in the tax-harvesting business. They just have classrooms as the excuse to harvest the tax money. The quality of the hamburger or the education is very much a secondary concern.

Flock Cameras

A lot of people are upset about Flock cameras. I must confess, I don't like them, but I can't see any way to stop them from what they are doing. It is perfectly legal. 

Consider, police can conduct warrantless tails of individuals for days at a time, as long as those tails remain in public areas, public thoroughfares and do not infringe on curtilage, that is, the home and the area immediately surrounding it. 

Flock cameras that are not trained on curtilage are viewing public thoroughfares. It is not a crime to publicly observe individuals who are traversing public areas. That's simple observation, and there is no law against it, nor can there be. If it were a crime, cops could not do warrantless tails, but they can do warrantless tails. 

Heck, game wardens can walk onto private property, install secret cameras and use the evidence derived in court without bothering to get a warrant. It is not considered trespass and the surveillance is completely legal. As long as the cameras are of woods and open fields, not curtilage, there is zero problem. This has been upheld countless times. Flock cameras are just public highway versions of this "Open Fields" doctrine. The Open Fields doctrine is relatively new, having been established during Prohibition, but it has never been overturned. In fact, SCOTUS was the court that created it (Hester v. United States, 1924). It has been reaffirmed, by SCOTUS, as recently as 1984  (Oliver v. United States).  Unfortunately, that's great precedent for Flock.

As I said, I don't like Flock cameras and I have no problem with people who knock them down (which is logically inconsistent of me, I grant), but Flock isn't violating the law.

Democrats: American Taliban

Amnesty International is now up in arms over the Taliban's recent passage of a law allowing child marriage. I have pointed out in previous essays that the Taliban law is not much different from late 19th century US law. In fact, it isn't much different than the current law in several US states. 

But, when you think about it more deeply, the Taliban law is actually not much different from current US federal law. 

All 50 states and Washington, D.C. (51 jurisdictions total) allow minors to consent to STI testing and treatment without parental consent. Meanwhile, 24 states + D.C. explicitly allow all minors to consent to contraceptive services: 

• 16 states allow it under specific circumstances (e.g., married, pregnant, parent, mature minor, or health risk).
• A few states have no explicit policy (providers may rely on general "mature minor" doctrines or other rules).
• 2 states (e.g., Texas in some contexts) have stricter rules, though federal programs can influence this.

Title X Family Planning Program (federal funding for clinics) requires providers to offer confidential services to minors without requiring parental consent or notification. Other federal rules like HIPAA generally treat minors who consent to their own care as having privacy rights over that information.

So, both the Taliban and American federal and state law allow minor children to engage in sex. In America, this is commonly protected activity, something a minor can engage in without parental permission or even parental knowledge. The government will actively work with the minor to make sure the parents never find out. In many cases, any attempt to notify the parents is actually a crime.

Meanwhile, the Taliban require that all sexual activity take place within the social construct of marriage, thereby providing at least a minimal structure of protection and care for the child engaging in sex.

So, explain how America, which allows minors to be used, abused and discarded, is morally superior to the Taliban, which requires minors at least be married and cared for within the confines of marriage.

Apart from the superior care for children expressed in the Taliban law, I honestly don't see that much difference between American practice and Taliban practice.

College as Social Club

All colleges teach the same facts. Course content is the same. There's only so many ways to teach someone how to calculate the area of a circle, then you're done. You can now learn most course content on Youtube. If you are going to college to learn content, you are mostly wasting your time and your money. For some things, like engineering, medicine, the law, you have to have a college degree to practice the profession. But for a lot of subjects, for example, history, English literature, philosophy, etc., college is simply unnecessary. All you need is a library card and interest in the field. 

HOWEVER...

The major advantage of college is the classmates. If you go to an "elite" college, your classmates will be children of Congressmen, your dorm roomate might be the child of a SCOTUS judge or a governor.

If you go to a "good" regional college, your classmates will be running companies or company technical departments, making hiring decisions, etc.

You go to college to make those social connections so your career advances. That's what the tuition pays for. College is a match-maker. It hooks you up with the people who will eventually be moving your industry in your area. 

You just have to realize that going in. When you take a class, you aren't trying to impress the professor. You're trying to impress your classmates, the people who will be important in your profession in ten years. You're making friends now so doors will be open for you later.

THAT is something you can't get through Youtube or Khan Academy. That's why you go to college. It is entirely about socialization now. 

Except as a way to virtue-signal to your colleagues, course content is kind of a side dish, not the centrepiece. College tuition is the annual dues at a country club. You don't go to country clubs for the meals or the golf, you go there to meet the other people in the club.

Teen Years are the Easiest

Everyone says say teen years are hard. That's bullshit. Homeschool and all these problems go away. I never had a dime's worth of trouble with any of my four children. They are all in their 20s now. 

When people complain about teen years, I have no idea what they are talking about. When your children are born, and for the next decade, point out to them continuously that for all of human history, a child was expected to be mature enough to marry and start a family by age 12. Up until the 1917 Code of Canon law, that was the law of the Church.

So, teach your children that they are adults by age 12 and you will treat them that way. You expect them to be ready to be married by age 12. Then, follow through. Treat everyone 12 years old or older as an adult, let them make adult choices, because they ARE adults. That's how civilization treated them for all of human history. It's only the last century that thinks they shouldn't be treated as adults. How's that working out for y'all?

Biological reality trumps modern civilizational bullshit. Once puberty hits, they CAN conceive children. Period. Doesn't matter if they are "ready" or "mature enough" for children (were YOU "ready" for children? The hell you were. So, that's a stupid argument).

They CAN conceive children. God doesn't give you more than you can handle, right? So, if God is willing to ensoul a child in a 12-year old's womb, then the 12-year old can handle it. Deal with the reality you claim to embrace. If you want to argue with this, then you don't actually believe about God what you say you believe. You don't believe what the Church taught for most of Christian history. 

12 year olds are adults. For most of human history, in every recorded culture, in every geographic region of the world, without any exception at all, 12-year olds could legally marry and start families. Get that through your thick head, build that expectation in them and then TREAT them as adults, and you will have zero problems with the teen years. 

Remember:

Amadeus Mozart wrote his first symphony at 8

Malala Yousafzai spoke out publicly for girls' education at 11 and survived an attack at 15.

Warren Buffett bought his first stock at age 11 and filed his first tax return at 13.

Age 12

• David Farragut was in command of a sailing ship by the age of 12.
• Stevie Wonder signed with Motown and began recording/performing professionally as "Little Stevie Wonder" at age 12.
• Mark Zuckerberg created a messaging program (ZuckNet) for his father's dental office at age 12.
• Mark Cuban started a business selling garbage bags and stamps door-to-door at age 12
• Alexander the Great began military training and leadership roles very young; tamed a legendary horse at age 12 and led campaigns as a teen.
• Blessed Virgin Mary gave birth to God at age 12.

Age 13

• Alexander Hamilton was orphaned and working as a clerk in a merchant business, supporting himself and gaining attention for his writing/intellect that led to further opportunities.
• Bobby Fischer won the U.S. Open Chess Championship (after earlier standout games like the “Game of the Century”).
• William Kamkwamba built a windmill from scrap materials in Malawi to power his family’s home, teaching himself engineering.
• Jordan Romero climbed Mount Everest (youngest person at the time to do so).
• Landers Gaydosh won a world championship in ice climbing.
• Anne Frank began her famous diary while in hiding, documenting life under Nazi occupation (her writings became a profound historical document).
• Willie Johnston was the youngest recipient of the Medal of Honor (U.S. Civil War, as a drummer boy around 13).

Age 14

• Thomas Edison started his own newspaper at age 14.
• Nadia Comăneci: Scored the first perfect 10 in Olympic gymnastics at age 14 (1976), winning multiple golds.
• Louis Braille: Invented the Braille reading/writing system at age 15 (tweaked from earlier work around 13–14), revolutionizing access for the blind
• Laura Dekker began her solo voyage around the world on August 21, 2010, at the age of 14, and completed the circumnavigation of the globe on January 21, 2012, at the age of 16, sailing a 40-foot ketch named Guppy.

Do you wonder why so many people find the teen years hard to deal with? That's easy. If you treated any other adult like you treat your children, how well would that go over? Would that adult punch you in the mouth? If so, then why wouldn't your kids fight the same urge? 

Yeah, THAT is why you have trouble in the teen years. Get this into your head. You have ten years from birth to get your child and yourself into the correct mindset. You gotta get your mind right.

If you don't, if you insist on treating a 12-year old like a 4-year old, you created for yourself and your child a runner and a rebel, which does nobody any good. You can try to be the Boss, but you just end up with Cool Hand Luke. Is that really what you want? 

You have to trust yourself and your child. Trust yourself, that you did the best you could. Then trust your child to be an adult. Yes, at age 12. Let them make their own mistakes. There's nothing wrong with mistakes. If you raised them right, they want to be like you. Most kids want to be like their parents. The best thing you can do for your child is let them be the adult they want to be. 

Sometimes that means they will make exactly the same mistakes you made. That is their choice, and you really cannot stop it.You are not in control of their life, THEY are in control of their life. Let them make mistakes, then point out that you did exactly the same dumb thing at roughly the same age, and apologize to them for that legacy. You owe them that much. 

Your mistakes were your responsibility.
Their mistakes are their responsibility.
Don't confuse the two. 
Let them own themselves.

On Lynchings

How common was lynching? In a country of 76 million people in 1900, there were about 4800 lynchings, total, for the whole of US history, and at least a quarter of them were of white folk. 

Total lynchings: Approximately 4,700–4,800 lynchings occurred between 1882 and 1968 (NAACP and Tuskegee Institute records), or about 55 deaths per year. 

• Black victims: ~3,446 (~73%)
• White victims: ~1,297 (~27%)

125 of the lynchings recorded between 1882 and 1903 (the period with the most available data) or roughly or roughly 3% overall, were black crowds lynching black prisoners.

Meanwhile, lightning strikes often caused 100–450+ deaths per year, peaking around 300–400 in some years. So, during peak lynching years, the annual risk of lynching for a black person was in the same ballpark as (or somewhat lower than) the lightning death risk for the general population. 

Lynching wasn't very common. 

Largest Single Lynching East of the Mississippi River: 
The 1891 New Orleans lynching (Louisiana) — 11 Italian immigrants were lynched by a mob after the murder of a police chief. This is frequently cited as one of the largest single mass lynchings in U.S. history, but that isn't accurate. That distinction belongs to LA.

Largest Single Lynching West of the Mississippi River:
The 1871 Los Angeles Chinese Massacre (California) — 18–19 Chinese men were lynched (hanged, shot, and beaten) in one of the deadliest attacks on Chinese immigrants in American history.

Pope Leo: Ignorant of Economics

Pope Leo XIV

@Pontifex

·

Jun 22

It is important to resist the commodification of basic human needs. Food, water and healthcare cannot be subordinated to market considerations or geopolitical interests. Access to adequate food is a fundamental human right grounded in the dignity of every person. Meeting this need not only alleviates suffering but also addresses underlying causes of geopolitical instability. Indeed, food security is an essential component of global and integral security.

Catholic bishops are supposed to care about the poor deeply, but none of them bother to study economics. This is as absurd as saying you care deeply about the sick, but you refuse to study medicine, anatomy, pharmacology.

Condemning commodification is identical to condemning doctors for performing triage. After all,  triage disfavors some of the sick in favor of others who are less sick, and all because doctors recognize they don't have enough supplies to treat everyone!

For shame!

By using triage, doctors commodify medicine!

The condemnation is stupid. It is true that the wealthy have a duty to the poor, but it is also true that no one person nor any group has enough resources to solve everyone's problems.

Thus, some method must be found of apportioning resources to need. The most efficient method we know to correctly apportion resources to needs is precisely commodification.

Just as we need to define terms before we have a conversation, so prices are part of the definition of  how resources should be apportioned to needs. We need definitions of terms, we need defined pricesto commune properly with each other. Price is a form of communication and definition, it is as absolutely critical to resource allocation as correct term definition and grammar is to language.

Literacy is Necromancy

 The Bible warns against necromancy. Necromancy is conjuring spirits of the dead, in order to gain hidden knowledge or foretell the future.

In nearly every book, the dead communicate with us.

When those books, written by the dead, describe mathematical formulas, especially statistical or other advanced maths, those formulas give us hidden knowledge which allow us to foretell the future. 

We predict the future (weather, baseball scores, etc.) by using formulas communicated to us by the dead via books.

Explain how reading books, especially science or math books, is not necromancy. 

Transhumanism is an intellectual and cultural movement that advocates for the use of advanced technologies to fundamentally enhance human physical and cognitive capabilities, eliminate disease, and significantly extend human life spans. Reading and writing are both technologies invented by men, they are advanced technologies compared to anything any other creature uses.

Explain how reading is not transhumanism.

A lot of the things Christians or the Bible says is evil are things the Bible or Christians do every day.

Some Cultures Are Simply Better

 This chart makes it clear that different cultures have fundamentally different ways of resolving problems.

Some cultures are pure shit. White, Asian, European cultures are simply better than tribal cultures. People have to decide how they want to live.

Everybody had the same 500 years. Japan went from society that literally used just swords, bows, and arrows in 1850 to building the finest fighter plane in the Pacific theater and start development on their own nuclear weapon in less than 90 years.

China went from being totally owned and oppressed by European powers during the 1830s Opium Wars to totally owning Europe and Canada today. It took less than two centuries.

Everybody had the same 500 years.

Not everyone made the same choices on how to use the time.

How Far Does Sub-Creation Go?

 Christians used to argue that babies conceived via IVF were not human and did not have souls.

When the Pope said they were wrong, the children WERE fully human, a lot of people felt this was some kind of tech delusion.

Either:

1. the human soul is actually just physics or
2. God creates and infuses a human soul.

If the former, then we can build an AI that has a living soul. Not necessarily a person, but certainly alive. 

If the something is alive because God creates and infuses a soul, then either God creates and infuses living souls into only carbon-based life forms (grass, trees, rabbits, people) or He infuses it into anything He wants.

Notice, human persons are persons because their souls are spirits (immortal). Everything else, according to Christian doctrine, has a living soul, but is not a person because those souls are not spirits.

If God is the one behind all this, then we don't know to what extent men can participate in creation.

We DO know that when you fully simulate a fruit fly's brain, with all neuronal connections in a simulation, the simulated fly ACTS like a fruit fly without any training at all. That is, we CAN create an artificial life at least as complex as a fruit fly. It has already been done. Artificial bacteria with fully artificial DNA have also been created.

So... that's food for thought.

The Magisterium has Jumped the Shark

Magnifica Humanitas demonstrates the terminal incoherence of the Magisterium as expressed by Pope Leo XIV

101. The gains in efficiency and the potential to improve certain services are clear, yet rapidly and uncritically adopting them exposes us to a range of risks, including the tendency to overlook the environmental impact.

It is amazing that this encyclical manages to contradict itself within the space, not of a single article, but of a single SENTENCE. The Pope apparently doesn't understand that EFFICIENCY PRESERVES the environment and reduces environmental impact. That's the whole point of efficiency, son. The more efficient a process is, the less resources it needs to dig out of the environment, the less it needs to manipulate the environment, in order to accomplish the task. He even says this in article 67, but he never connects the dots between the articles. 

67. Furthermore, care for our common home and our responsibility toward the poor and future generations require that the use of the goods of creation and the new possibilities offered by technology be regulated in such a way as to respect the environment, avoid waste and prevent new forms of exploitation.

But then, he makes EXACTLY the same mistake in regards to profits and economics in general. In article 30, he extols Rerum Novarum (a Johnny-Come-Lately encyclical if ever there was one), in part, by saying:

30. Leo XIII’s Encyclical Rerum Novarum constitutes a milestone in the development of the Church’s social teaching. The document places the dignity of work and of workers at the forefront of its reflection; affirms the right to a fair wage for oneself and one’s family; recognizes that persons have a fundamental value that takes precedence over capital and profit;

But he is apparently completely unaware that profit is exactly what happens when a massive number of people express their personal preference for a particular good or service. Profit happens when you allow persons to express their fundamental value by giving them the opportunity to obtain the things they fundamentally value for their own existence. Businesses make profits when their services are valued by massive numbers of people.

72. When it comes to decisions regarding economic flows and digital platforms, as well as the governance of data and algorithms, we cannot allow a handful of actors to dictate these processes on their own; instead, we must build forms of cooperation that respect the various levels of the global community and make them jointly responsible for the common good

Massive profits happen precisely because a massive number of people vote, with their dollars, on which processes they want. By definition, the processes that are controlled only by a handful of actors don't make a profit. The customer has to agree that the process is useful enough to buy, thereby making the entire global community (to whom this process is available) jointly responsible for the common good. 

Dollar spending *IS* communication. People communicate their preferences by voting with their wallet. If you attack profits, you attack one of the major, foundational communication lines people have with each other. 

So, he tells us to treasure communications while he actively attacks the communications (profits) we use, in part, to allocate resources. He tells us to care for the environment and its resources, but for God's sake don't prize efficiency. He reacts towards AI the same way the Holy Office reacted to the printing press. 

This is ironic because AI is simply the electronic version of bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is the lingua franca of the Church. AI is simply a book that can actually reply to live questions. If God is pure logic, and God is love, then love may well be the correct application of pure logic. That would mean AI may be capable of love. Can we make a tool that allows us to speak reality into existence, thereby becoming sub-creators in the image of God? AI promises that. Since God intends us to be sub-creators and participate in our own redemption, man's creation of AI would thus be a participation in the life-giving power of God, just another form of fecundity. Is this ethical? Well, if the Christian conception of man's purpose is correct, yes, it absolutely is. 

It's a fucking stupid encyclical, filled with theological cant, endlessly repeated bromides, in which every article contradicts every other article. 

The Church may one day have something useful to say about AI.
I look forward to that future day. 

Math and Poetry

Every specialty has its own language. There is no question this is true. But math is uniquely able to destroy people's confidence and self-image if it isn't handled well. 

This particular language is spoken by every inanimate object in the universe. The point of magic, of necromancy, of astrology, of all that nonsense, is to speak directly with the universe and/or "the spirits" that are said to dominate it.

Mathematics does what all those others things try to do, but can't. Math allows you to communicate with stones, trees, stars, with EVERYTHING. 

Math is the Ur-language.

When people can't do math, they lose the ability to converse with the universe. And they inchoately know that they have not got the ability. It is humiliating in a way that not knowing other sub-languages can never be.

Now, some people object to learning math via online tools like Khan Academy, but the tool itself is not the problem. The tool has to be used as a teacher, but the student must practice the concepts taught themselves, or all the videos in the world are a waste of time. Math problems must be done on paper with pencil. Writing with pencils and paper is the single most important way of building memories and connections. 

That's why all math needs to be done in a math notebook. The computer screen CAN be instructional, when used correctly, but math is done between the brain, the pencil and the paper. 

Reading physical books is geometric - each physical page maps to a physical memory in a way that screen reading cannot emulate. Our house is filled with books, my adult kids still routinely read 500 to 1000 page books on the regular.

But, if you need to teach a subject you don't know, a screen can have a place. Listening to a Feynman lecture cannot be done without appealing to electronics. That's just how it is. 

As Chesterton said, we have to commune with the great civilization of the dead. The dead can commune with us through books, and now also through screens. Screens have their uses.

Only Elon Musk Believes in Evolution

 Everyone says evolution is real, but no one acts as if it were.

If intelligence is a positive product of evolution, then smarter people would reproduce more. But they don't. Someone who was a) smart, b) REALLY believed in evolution and c) believed themselves to be genetically better than average would d) want to reproduce. Richard Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene" revolves around this idea. The entire premise of evolution is that genes well-adapted to an environment proliferate. But, across the globe, TFR is dropping. It drops fastest in areas with high IQ. Public, vociferous proponents of evolution don't have children themselves. So, proponents of evolution are either a) stupid, b) secretly believe themselves to be dysgenic or c) secretly don't actually believe in evolution. Most people who claim to believe in evolution really don't. That's the charitable explanation. The uncharitable explanation is that people without children are stupid, and we're watching the world descend into a maelstrom of stupidity as TFR drops. That is, in the movie Idiocracy, the stupidest people were the "smart" couple that never had kids. Now, there is a third explanation. The underlying assumption to the previous analysis is, of course, that our thoughts are of any importance. But, if our ability to think does not matter at all (from an evolutionary standpoint), then the lack of reproduction is not based on anyone's beliefs. In fact, what any person believes/thinks is simply a distraction from what is really important to reproduction and evolution. If this is true, then IQ is not currently a positive contribution to gene survival.

Every Ancient Abrahamic Theology Wrong on Economics

If you would like to see an interesting thumbnail about economic policies over the centuries, this link provides an interesting chart and an even more interesting discussion in the comments.

The comments point out that this chart does NOT include information on "Jewish loans." The reason is obvious. As anyone with even a passing interest in medieval history knows, Christians could not loan to each other at interest, so when they needed a loan, they had to go to a non-Christian group to get the necessary cash. Jews were willing to do that work, so, in most cases, they became the bankers. There is, of course, the exception of the Christian Lombards. While Christian doctrine banned usury and restricted lending, Lombard bankers, often operating as merchant bankers, managed to operate by structuring loans as "conditional sales" or by charging fees on pawnbroked goods. When Jews were not available, the Lombards often stepped in to fill the gap. But, in any case, the Lombards and their customers had to find ways around Christian theological principles.

This was necessary because Christian theological principles concerning economic policy was, and still is, purest crap. And, to be fair, so is Jewish economic policy. After all, according to Jewish law (halakha), it is forbidden for a Jew to charge interest (ribit) on a loan to another Jew. And, to be fair, Muslims are prohibited from charging interest to ANYONE. The only reason correct economics could evolve in Europe was because both Jews and Christians "cheated" their own theologies by "mis-treating" people who were not part of their own faith system.

Notice, the pagans did not have this problem, because the pagans were theologically correct about economics. Sumerians, Babylonians, Hittites, Phoenicians, Egyptians, Greeks and even pagan Rome, were all fine with the charging of interest. Interest was legal and common from as early as ~3000–2000 BC. The Code of Hammurabi (c. 1750 BC) regulated maximum rates (e.g., ~20–33% for grain or silver loans). Temples acted as lenders, charging interest. Indeed, the loans were worded so the divinity himself was actually the one governing the loan, and repayment was being made directly to the god.

But the God of Abraham did not allow this. Christians could not loan to Christians, Jews could not loan to Jews, Muslims could not loan to anyone. From the Jewish perspective, acting as bankers allowed them to slip a fast one past the goyim. From the Christian perspective, the Christians were being cheated, but it was often the only way to survive economically. Both sides only felt this whole arrangement was "cheating" because absolutely EVERY Abrahamic theology was purest crap, completely out of contact with reality, when it comes to economics.

The Christian religious system doesn't allow for proper interest rate or a decent market economy. That is why it had to "cheat" by taking recourse in an entirely different religious group to obtain the economically necessary pieces. Once you realize this, you realize that Christian, Jewish (and the derivative Muslim) economic policies are all completely wrong about a basic fact of human social existence. Every single Abrahamic system is simply and absolutely wrong. Their attempts to "cheat" their way around obviously wrong economic principles is the central cause for a significant part of the hatred each group carries towards the others today. It could be argued that the God of Abraham Himself engendered the foundation of hatred by refusing that which the pagan gods recognized as necessary. 

Christianity won over medieval society only because it had a better grasp of human nature and physical reality than either Judaism or Islam. It took Christian realism about the laws of the physical world to create the scientific revolution. Most of the earliest ground-breaking "scientists" (aka natural philosophers) were priests and bishops. This, in turn, was made possible only through the Christian embrace of pagan Greek principles of logic. While both Judaism and Islam rejected Aristotle, Christians embraced and used his principles. Aristotle's "On Logic" was the only Greek text that was never lost to the West. Pagan logic applied to Christian precepts and pagan banking principles applied to the Christian economy built Christian Europe.

At this point, however, Christianity is losing out to Islam. Why? Well, it is noteworthy that all three groups used to keep women out of power. Today, only Islam really retains that ancient teaching. In Western countries, studies indicate women make up the majority of converts to Islam, with some reports suggesting they constitute 60% to 75% of new converts in the UK. Similar trends appear in Australia (women roughly double the rate of men), France, and other European countries, with female converts often outnumbering males by 2:1 to 4:1 in anecdotal and survey data. Since women have the babies, when a woman converts, all of her progeny have also converted.

TLDR: All Abrahamic religions are crappy when it comes to economics. Women seem to prefer subjugation and harem life, and they want that for their children.

The Silence of the Dog in the Night

For those still defending Erika Kirk.

Name one video, blog, or podcast she has done in which she has directly championed any of the points her late husband promoted, such as:

1) insisting the US should not get involved in war with Iran

2) calling out Jewish donors who are trying to control the right-wing blogosphere

3) questioning the official Israeli narrative about what happened on October 7.

4) Promoting Charlie's economic policies

5) Repeating Charlie's stance on election integrity and voter fraud

Then explain why a woman would take her assassinated husband's position, knowing she could also be assassinated and thereby leave her children fully orphans.

Provide links to commentary from Charlie that indicates he would support a mother increasing the likelihood his children would be orphans.

Explain where the Bible promotes a woman who chooses to be assassinated over choosing to be mother to her already born children. 

Erika has vowed to make TPUSA “10 times better." Comment on what she is implicitly saying about the way Charlie ran TPUSA.

Erika has said she has to work to support her kids, even though it is documented fact that Charlie left her at least $10 million in cash and estates. Comment on what she is implicitly saying about Charlie's financial competence when she publicly says she has to work.

Telling a New Story

First Things has published yet another article lamenting the refusal of universal truth, and the retreat into "private" or "personal truth" as a way for people to explain the universe. They correctly note that this is untenable, but they don't seem to understand what's going on.

The primary issue is not the retreat into "personal truth."
The primary issue: men are built to listen to and reflect stories.

The overarching text which formed the civilizations of Greece and Rome was the Illiad/Odyssey. Everyone knew it, everyone quoted it, that text was the story pagan life built itself around.

Western Civilization was the Catholic Bible. The Catholic Bible had a relatively coherent story line with beginning, middle and end. 

Society is now re-orienting itself according to a much larger text that does not yet have a beginning, middle and end: the Internet.  The Internet is a cacophony of disparate, often conflicting stories. To retain a coherent story, every person has to retreat into his own self-constructed shell, because the Internet has not yet coalesced into one story-like, universal narrative. Worldviews are in a significant state of flux. No one can abide this, but no one has been able to fix it.

Until the Internet finishes this process and again presents a consistent story, the "private truth" approach is the only way for people to maintain the necessary story-like coherence our worldviews require. It is very likely that AI chatbots are, intentionally or not, being constructed so as to provide that coherent story-like worldview. We pursue these synthesizers of enormous information because we desperately need a story-teller. No AI currently has dominance. Whichever AI wins and gains dominance will be the story-teller going forward.

Jews do dominate a fair number of these AI endeavors, but the leaders in the field are primarily secular and they are not clearly winning. ChatGPT and Sam Altman may have been first movers, but it is increasingly unlikely that they win this race. Christians are not participating in the AI race, so their worldview will almost certainly not be  the dominant story-telling paradigm. Same for Muslims,  Haredi, Hindus, and most other religious viewpoints. 

We don't know what the new story will be, or what values it will espouse. The transition from the Iliad and Odyssey moved the value system from one based on personal honor and personal courage in the face of overwhelming odds to a society based around personal self-sacrifice, rationality and love (service to others) as organizing principles. The Internet will eventually tell a story that is unlikely to be based on either of these value sets. 

Elon Musk has famously stated his attempt to colonize Mars is not strictly about making mankind a multi-planetary species. It is also primarily his belief that mankind needs a dream to pursue. Musk is absolutely correct. His Mars colonization plan is almost certainly a necessary component of the emerging story mankind will use to organize itself, but is almost certainly not sufficient.

Godel obliterated the way Western society looked at itself. Western society was built around the ideas of Christianity, which included and emphasized that God was pure rationality, and therefore the embodiment of all truth.

While Godel was a theist, a man who even produced a proof demonstrating that Anselm's proof for the existence of God was valid, the Incompleteness Theorems shattered one of the foundational concepts of Western civilization - the idea that Pure Rationality (i.e., the Christian God) could embody the fullness of truth. World civilization has never really recovered from that shock.

Men need a story that forces them to reach beyond what they think they can achieve on their own. This is what drove the popularity of Christianity, it was what drove the Avengers' movies and every adventure movie ever made. As Musk correctly intuits, Mars is a good start, and grounding in reality is foundational, but we need an organizing story in which to place both of these goals. That is what every society on earth is currently trying to create.

No Vow, No Vocation

If the life you are living did not involve a vow of some kind, then it is not a vocation. The Magisterial documents do not consider single life a vocation because single life does not involve a vow.

Marriage, religious, consecrated virgin, sister, nun, monk, brother, even ordained, all involve a vow of some kind. Without a vow before God, there is no "state in life" or vocation. 

At least, that's what the Church teaches. This is stated explicitly in Vatican II's document on the laity.

56. The Church's rich variety is manifested still further from within each state of life. Thus within the lay state diverse "vocations" are given, that is, there are different paths in the spiritual life and the apostolate which are taken by individual members of the lay faithful. In the field of a "commonly shared" lay vocation "special" lay vocations flourish. In this area we can also recall the spiritual experience of the flourishing of diverse forms of secular institutes that have developed recently in the Church. These offer the lay faithful, and even priests, the possibility of professing the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience through vows or promises, while fully maintaining one's lay or clerical state[204]. In this regard the Synod Fathers have commented, "The Holy Spirit stirs up other forms of self-giving to which people who remain fully in the lay state devote themselves"[205]....

...Along the same line the Second Vatican Council states: "This lay spirituality should take its particular character from the circumstances of one's state in life (married and family life, celibacy, widowhood), from one's state of health and from one's professional and social activity. All should not cease to develop earnestly the qualities and talents bestowed on them in accord with these conditions of life and should make use of the gifts which they have received from the Holy Spirit"[208].   Christifideles Laici #56

Notice, the document refers to "state in life" by then listing the states. Each state is attained by making a vow. Single life is not listed as a "state in life". Being single may be a circumstance or a condition of life, but it is not a "state in life" nor is it a "vocation."

Vocare is a Latin verb meaning "to call," "to name," or "to summon". It is derived from the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root, meaning "to speak,"

When we live out a vow, we call out God's name in our lives. The vow speaks our desire to be bound to God's plan for our lives. If we have not spoken the vow, we have not called out to God, we have not explicitly given God a voice in how we will live our lives. 

Because single life does not involve an explicit vow, it is no more a vocation than having A+ blood is a vocation. It may be something we live with,  it may be part of who we are, but neither of those lived situations doesn't make for a vocation within the Catholic meaning of the word. 

Money as a Story

 I don't know if this story about the Rothschilds is true. It is probably closer to a Kipling-esque "Just So" story (illustrations included). While it may or may not be historically accurate, the idea behind it seems highly credible. 

1. Every dinner ended the same way. One of the Rothschild elders would suddenly ask a child: from and where today’s money in this room came. The child had to trace it — a loan in Vienna, a railway bond in France, gold shipments moving through London. Guests thought it was awkward interrogation. The family called it financial memory training.

2. If the answer was vague, the response was blunt. One banker reportedly told his son: “Money you can’t explain is money you will lose.” The exercise forced children to understand the origin of every asset - which deal created it, which risk protected it, which partner could destroy it.

3. Another rule made guests uncomfortable: children were allowed to interrupt adults with financial questions. If someone mentioned a company or investment, the child could ask: “How does it produce cash?” or “Who actually pays for it?” No one at the table was allowed to dismiss the question.

4. By their teens, heirs could mentally map entire deal structures. A family letter from the 19th century described it simply: “Teach them to see money as a story, not a number.” When markets crashed, they didn’t panic - they knew the machinery behind the wealth. 

5. One descendant summarized the ritual years later: “Most families teach children how to spend money politely. We were taught to interrogate it.”

That habit - asking where every dollar came from and where it flows next - quietly turned dinners into financial training sessions that compounded for generations.

Billionaires and Poverty Destruction

Any culture which has millionaires or billionaires has strongly enforced laws on private property and the right to capital accumulation. Any culture which encourages capital accumulation has low poverty rates. 

This is not a coincidence.

People are not created equal in ability. In any given skill area, some people are more skilled than others.  Cultures that encourage everyone to accumulate wealth will therefore always see wealth inequality due to the skill inequality between citizens. If the rules are the same for everyone, some people will do magnificently better than others. Thus, we see Olympic athlets, master violinists, amazing actors, and millionaires and billionaires. 

No one talks about a "talent inequalities" that must be "remedied" by infusing less capable artists with more artistic ability. Yet people talk about "income inequalities" as if the ability to accumulate and maintain massive income and wealth (two separate things, btw) was not a talent. 

The point here is simple: if your culture has millionaires and billionaires, it has very low or non-existent poverty. A country whose laws allow everyone to accumulate wealth will naturally produce people whose skill level allows them to do this to a superlative degree, but will also allow everyone in the culture to do it to at least some degree. Everyone who wants to get out of poverty can.

If your culture has no millionaires or billionaires, then your cultural rules guarantee poverty. No one, not even the most highly skilled persons, can get out of poverty because the rules won't allow it.

The answer is not to pour money into such a situation. By definition, the cultural rules will make sure virtually no one can maintain or use the wealth that enters. The answer is to change the cultural rule set. You will know you have changed the rules towards poverty obliteration when you start seeing a dramatic difference in wealth accumulation between large segments of the population.

This isn't "trickle-down economics", the idea that the wealth of the rich will somehow "leak" down to those who are poor. It is, instead, just the recognition that different skill levels will result in different outcomes. The outcomes don't matter - the rules and skill levels of the players determine the outcomes.

If you want to eliminate poverty, you have to allow people to use their talents to better themselves. Everyone who can do so, will do so. 

What of those who cannot? In a Christian society, the wealthy will care for them as part of their Christian identity. This is true, to a lesser extent, in Judeo-Muslim societies as well. Karmic societies, such as cultures based on Hinduism or Buddhism, won't take care of their poor, because they see the poor as people who are destined to be poor, they must be poor to "burn off" their bad karma. 

Advances in Gene Therapy

Things are moving very fast in the area of gene therapy. Remember, while gene therapy that changes somatic cells is considered morally acceptable by the Vatican, any gene therapy that changes gametes is considered sinful by the Catholic Church because it corrects the defects for all subsequent generations and engineers a "better" human being (i.e., it is eugenics). 

1. Donum Vitae (1987): This document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) teaches that techniques involving gametes (like IVF or artificial insemination) which separate the marriage act from procreation are immoral.
2. Dignitas Personae (2008): This document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith specifically outlines the church’s stance on gene therapy and stem cells, including the prohibition of procedures that manipulate or destroy embryos, including genetic engineering, cloning, and the freezing of embryos. 

Now, in practice, this is a distinction without a difference, as every parent alive would simply apply the genetic solution to their children either in utero or shortly after birth, so functionally, every subsequent generation of human beings is going to be healed of the genetic disease regardless. It's just that the Church has decided the more efficient way of doing it (gamete change) is sinful while the less efficient way (somatic cell therapy) is morally acceptable. 

HIV Cure

The Amsterdam UMC team used CRISPR-Cas gene editing—often described as molecular scissors—to target conserved (stable across strains) sequences in the HIV genome. Key findings from their 2024 work (presented ahead of the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases):

• They employed systems like saCas9 (a smaller Cas9 variant from Staphylococcus aureus) and tested cjCas9.
• With one guide RNA (gRNA), saCas9 could inactivate HIV.
• With two gRNAs, it excised (cut out) segments of the integrated viral DNA from the host chromosome in infected T cells.
• In cell culture experiments, this led to complete elimination of infectious HIV, with no detectable viral traces or rebound. The edited cells also resisted reinfection when re-exposed to the virus.

Approved Gene Therapies (Viral Vector-Based Gene Addition or Delivery)

These deliver a functional copy of the defective gene, often using adeno-associated virus (AAV) or lentiviral vectors.

• Leber Congenital Amaurosis (LCA) Type 2 / Inherited Retinal Dystrophy due to RPE65 mutations Treatment: Luxturna (voretigene neparvovec) — in vivo AAV gene therapy injected into the eye. Outcome: Restores vision or slows vision loss; first in vivo gene therapy approved (2017/2018). Improves light sensitivity and navigation in patients with this rare blinding disorder.
• Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA), especially Type 1 (infantile-onset) Treatment: Zolgensma (onasemnogene abeparvovec) — in vivo AAV9 gene therapy delivering functional SMN1 gene. Outcome: One-time IV infusion; enables motor milestone achievement, prolongs survival, and reduces need for ventilation in treated infants. Approved for young children.
• Hemophilia A (severe, Factor VIII deficiency) Treatment: Roctavian (valoctocogene roxaparvovec) — in vivo AAV5 liver-directed gene therapy. Outcome: Sustained production of Factor VIII, reducing bleeding episodes and need for prophylactic factor replacement.
• Hemophilia B (Factor IX deficiency) Treatment: Hemgenix (etranacogene dezaparvovec) — in vivo AAV-based gene therapy. Outcome: Long-term Factor IX expression, significantly reducing bleeding rates.
• Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) Treatment: Elevidys (delandistrogene moxeparvovec) — in vivo AAV gene therapy delivering a micro-dystrophin gene. Outcome: Improves muscle function and slows disease progression in eligible ambulatory patients (approved with accelerated/expanded indications).
• Recessive Dystrophic Epidermolysis Bullosa (RDEB, a severe skin blistering disorder) Treatment: Vyjuvek (beremagene geperpavec) or similar topical gene therapy. Outcome: Promotes wound healing and skin integrity by delivering functional COL7A1 gene.

Other notable approvals include therapies for aromatic L-amino acid decarboxylase (AADC) deficiency (Kebilidi) and certain immunodeficiencies like Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome (recent approvals for autologous gene-corrected stem cells).

CRISPR-Based Genome Editing Therapies (Primarily Ex Vivo)

These involve editing patient cells outside the body (ex vivo) or, in emerging cases, directly in the body (in vivo).

• Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) Treatment: Casgevy (exagamglogene autotemcel, exa-cel) — ex vivo CRISPR-Cas9 editing of hematopoietic stem cells to reactivate fetal hemoglobin (by editing BCL11A). Also Lyfgenia (lentiviral gene addition, non-CRISPR). Outcome: First CRISPR-approved therapy (UK 2023, FDA 2023). Eliminates or dramatically reduces vaso-occlusive crises (painful episodes); many patients become crisis-free with sustained fetal hemoglobin production. Functional cure in a high percentage of treated patients.
• Transfusion-Dependent Beta-Thalassemia (TDT) Treatment: Casgevy (same as above). Also earlier lentiviral therapies like Zynteglo (betibeglogene autotemcel). Outcome: Most patients become transfusion-independent with normalized or near-normal hemoglobin levels for years post-treatment.

Primary Success: OTOF-Related Deafness (DFNB9 / Auditory Neuropathy Spectrum Disorder)

• Cause: Mutations in the OTOF gene prevent proper function of otoferlin, a protein essential for transmitting sound signals from inner ear hair cells to the auditory nerve. Affected individuals are typically born profoundly deaf (or with severe hearing loss) in both ears.
• Therapy Approach: In vivo AAV (adeno-associated virus) gene therapy delivers a functional copy of the OTOF gene directly into the inner ear (usually via intracochlear injection under anesthesia). Because the OTOF coding sequence is large, some therapies use a dual-AAV vector system to split and reassemble the gene.

Key Clinical Results (as of 2025–2026)

• DB-OTO (Regeneron / Decibel Therapeutics):
  • In the pivotal CHORD trial (published in NEJM, October 2025), 12 children with OTOF-related profound deafness received a single infusion.
  • Outcomes: 11 of 12 participants (92%) showed clinically meaningful hearing improvements; 9 of 12 met the primary endpoint (average pure-tone audiometry threshold ≤70 dB HL at week 24). Three achieved near-normal or normal hearing sensitivity. Six could hear soft speech without devices. Improvements were often seen within weeks, with stability or further gains up to 72 weeks in follow-up. Some participants showed improved speech perception.
  • Regeneron has indicated plans to seek regulatory approval (potentially making this the first approved gene therapy for hearing loss).
• Other OTOF trials (China-led, Akouos/Lilly AK-OTOF, Sensorion SENS-501, and collaborations involving Harvard/Mass Eye and Ear, CHOP, etc.):
• Multiple independent trials (starting 2022–2024) restored hearing in profoundly deaf children aged 1–7 (and some older patients up to ~24 years).
• Examples: Five of six children in a bilateral treatment trial gained the ability to recognize speech, understand conversation (including in noise for some), and locate sound sources. One child went from complete deafness to mild-moderate loss and could hear voices/ambient sounds for the first time.
• Improvements often progressive over months; many achieved functional hearing sufficient to avoid or reduce reliance on cochlear implants.
• Benefits observed in both children and young adults, with rapid onset (often within 1 month) and sustained effects.

CRISPR/Gene Editing for Hearing Loss

• Preclinical/Animal Success: CRISPR-Cas9 has been used successfully in mouse models to:
  • Disrupt dominant-negative mutations (e.g., in Tmc1 "Beethoven" mice) and preserve or restore hearing.
  • Prevent progressive hearing loss or protect against noise-induced damage.
  • Improve outer hair cell survival in certain genetic models.
• Human Status: No widespread clinical success or approvals yet for CRISPR-based treatments of deafness. Early research and consensus statements note potential, but trials remain preclinical or very early-stage. One area of interest is progressive adult-onset genetic deafness (e.g., DFNA41 models), where editing showed promise in animals and patient-derived cells.

Approved Gene and Cell Therapies for Cancer

The most established successes use CAR-T cell therapy, an ex vivo gene therapy approach. Patient T cells are extracted, genetically modified (often via viral vectors) to express a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) that targets cancer cells, expanded, and reinfused.

Approved CAR-T therapies (as of 2026) include:

• Kymriah (tisagenlecleucel): For relapsed/refractory B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and certain large B-cell lymphomas. Many patients achieve complete remission, with some durable responses lasting years.
• Yescarta (axicabtagene ciloleucel) and Breyanzi (lisocabtagene maraleucel): For large B-cell lymphoma and other non-Hodgkin lymphomas. High rates of complete response in refractory cases.
• Tecartus (brexucabtagene autoleucel): For mantle cell lymphoma and B-cell ALL.
• Abecma (idecabtagene vicleucel) and Carvykti (ciltacabtagene autoleucel): For relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma, targeting BCMA. Significant remission rates, including stringent complete responses in heavily pretreated patients.

Other approved gene-based cancer therapies:

• Provenge (sipuleucel-T): Autologous cellular immunotherapy (gene-modified dendritic cells) for prostate cancer.
• Imlygic (talimogene laherparepvec, T-VEC): Oncolytic virus gene therapy injected into melanoma lesions to stimulate immune response.
• Adstiladrin (nadofaragene firadenovec): Adenoviral vector delivering interferon-alpha for non-muscle invasive bladder cancer.

Long-term outcomes: Some early CAR-T patients (treated around 2010) remain cancer-free over a decade later, with the modified cells persisting as "living drugs." Complete remissions have been documented in refractory leukemias and lymphomas, allowing patients to achieve durable disease-free status.

CRISPR and Gene Editing in Cancer

CRISPR-Cas9 and related editing tools (e.g., base editing) are used ex vivo to enhance immune cells or disrupt cancer-promoting genes. No broad CRISPR approvals for cancer exist yet, but clinical results are encouraging:

• CRISPR-edited CAR-T or TIL therapies: Trials show safety and responses in blood cancers and solid tumors. For example, a University of Minnesota trial using CRISPR to knock out the CISH gene in tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) for advanced gastrointestinal cancers resulted in halted tumor growth in several patients and a complete response (tumors disappeared and did not return for over two years) in one case.
• Base-edited CAR-T (e.g., BE-CAR7): For T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL), an aggressive "incurable" blood cancer. In trials, 82% of patients achieved deep remission (enabling stem cell transplant), and 64% remained disease-free at follow-up (some over three years).
• Preclinical/early work: CRISPR to reverse chemotherapy resistance (e.g., editing NRF2 in head and neck or lung cancers) or enhance CAR-T persistence against solid tumors.

In vivo approaches (direct delivery without removing cells) are emerging, including AAV-based and lentiviral in vivo CAR-T reprogramming, with early signs of efficacy in leukemia and myeloma models.

The "non-biologist" Australian man who used AI protein-folding software to cure his dog of cancer.

Nobel Prize Winners Who Refused Judaism

It is a commonplace that Jews make up less than 1% of the world's population, but between 25% and 30% of the world's Nobel Prize winners. However, that assumes we are supposed to ignore the Nobel Prize winners' own testimony about whether or not they were/are Jewish.

A lot of them refused the title.

1. Albert Einstein (Physics, 1921) — Of Jewish descent; famously described himself as an agnostic and did not practice Judaism religiously, viewing religion more philosophically/culturally.
2. Niels Bohr (Physics, 1922) — Jewish mother (Jewish by matrilineal descent); identified as an atheist or non-religious, with no adherence to Jewish religious practice.
3. Paul Ehrlich (Physiology or Medicine, 1908) – Baptized Lutheran, moved in Christian German circles, did not consider himself Jewish.
4. Richard Feynman (Physics, 1965) — Jewish ancestry; openly identified as a positive atheist and non-believer.
5. Milton Friedman (Economics, 1976) — A prominent economist, he was an atheist/agnostic. He did not maintain religious practice. 
6. Fritz Haber (Chemistry, 1918): Despite his Jewish ancestry, Haber was a fervent German patriot who converted to Lutheranism in 1892, he portrayed himself as a German Christian patriot and actively rejected the idea that he was Jewish.
7. Herbert A. Hauptman (Chemistry, 1985) — Jewish background; grouped with nonreligious (atheist/agnostic) laureates who did not identify religiously as Jewish.
8. Roald Hoffmann (Chemistry, 1981) — Jewish heritage (survivor family); while culturally connected, often grouped with secular or non-theistic Jewish laureates.
9. François Jacob (Physiology or Medicine, 1965) — Born to a Jewish family and raised with some religious exposure; became an atheist shortly after his bar mitzvah and did not identify with Judaism.
10. Karl Landsteiner (Physiology or Medicine, 1930) — Jewish mother, baptized and raised Catholic, considered himself Catholic, actively resisted being called Jewish.
11. Élie Metchnikoff (Physiology or Medicine, 1908) — Jewish ancestry but was an atheists/agnostic who did not believe in God or practice/identify with the religion.
12. Rita Levi-Montalcini (Physiology or Medicine, 1986) — Jewish Italian family; secular/non-religious, listed among notable Jewish atheists/agnostics.
13. Jerome Karle (Chemistry, 1985) — Jewish background; identified as agnostic.
14. Harry Kroto (Chemistry, 1996) — Kroto was of Jewish descent but identified as a "devout atheist". He did not view his heritage as a defining factor of his identity
15. Boris Pasternak (Literature, 1958) — Born to an assimilated Jewish family in Moscow; parents were culturally Russian, not religiously Jewish. He was deeply embedded in Russian culture and Orthodoxy‑inflected imagery, but never converted formally.
16. Wolfgang Pauli (Physics, 1945) — Pauli’s father converted from Judaism to Roman Catholicism shortly before Pauli's birth, and Pauli was raised as a Roman Catholic. Although he later left the Church and was of Jewish descent, he did not consider himself Jewish.
17. Max Perutz (Chemistry, 1962) — Born into a Jewish family in Austria, Perutz was a baptized Catholic who later became a "devout atheist".
18. Jack Steinberger (Physics, 1988) — Born to a Jewish family; described himself as an atheist and humanist.
19. Adolf von Baeyer (Chemistry, 1905) — Often cited as the first Nobel laureate with Jewish ancestry (on his mother's side), he was baptized and raised Christian, lived as Christian German nobility and did not identify with Judaism.
20. Eugene Wigner (Physics, 1963) — Wigner’s family converted to Lutheranism when he was a teenager. While born to Jewish parents, his formal religious affiliation for most of his life was Christian.
21. Richard Willstätter (Chemistry, 1915) — Converted to Christianity, strongly identified as assimilated German, not as Jewish.
22. Many laureates from assimilated families in Germany or Austro-Hungary, like Hans Krebs, often identified primarily with German culture rather than Jewish identity

965 people have won Nobel Prizes since the establishment of the prize through 2025, only between 30 and 60 could arguably be considered to have acknowledged themselves Jews. Of those, the vast majority won either the Peace Prize or the Literature Prize.

Generally, about 220 of those individuals are considered to be Jewish, primarily due to parentage. NBut, once we exclude the people who clearly did not consider themselves Jewish (the large secular/atheist majority), the remaining group that did identify with Judaism would represent roughly 3–6% of all 965 individual Nobel laureates (or possibly lower, depending on how strictly "identify with Judaism" is defined).

Of course, less than 1% of the world's population and 3% of the Nobel Prizes is pretty good.  But this highlights a real inconsistency in how the "Jewish Nobel" statistic is often presented: it leans heavily on ethnic/heritage counting for one group while religious self-ID is used (or at least implied) for others. When we strip away ancestry-only inclusions and focus on personal identification, the Jewish share drops substantially, the atheist/secular share rises accordingly, and Christians (Catholic + Protestant + others) still dominate.